Monday, August 25, 2008

DELICIOUS ST. PAUL

Bear with me. Thanks to all the traveling I’ve been doing this summer (Pacific Northwest and Indiana in July; Minnesota in August), I haven’t been doing much blogworthy cooking lately. Until I manage to get my act together, here are some photos from my recent visit to the St. Paul Farmers’ Market.

After a few years away from my hometown, what struck me was how the produce was portioned so neatly into individual containers. At the California farmers’ markets I’ve frequented, the fashion tends more towards enormous crates or casual heaps from which you fill a plastic bag with your desired amount, then hand it to the seller to be weighed. While this system is much more practical for me (I can control how much I buy, making it easier to match the exact quantities called for by a recipe), it certainly isn’t as aesthetically pleasing (at least to obsessive-compulsives like me!) as all those perfect rows of little boxes and baskets.

Yet I was equally pleased, in a different way, by this heap of garlic. Er, “garlics.” I bought one as a souvenir.

These flowers were extra-pretty when awash in the early-morning sunlight. Thanks, parents, for forcing me to get up so ungodly early!

Yes, please! Man, I love those little yellow guys right there.

Beep!

Wee baby squash, so cute.

Two vegetables I have never tasted.

Cleverly preassembled salsa ingredients. I love the spiciness scale.

Harbinger of fall.

I could eat all of those tomatoes right now. Hmm, perhaps it’s time to take my lunch break.

Afterwards, we had breakfast at my parents’ neighborhood café, Bon Vie, where they know how to serve proper pots of tea (we were all drinking my favorite everyday tea, Tea Source Emperor’s Blend, on this particular morning):

My appetite whetted by all that gorgeous farmers’ market produce, I had this delicious and unique vegetable hash (potatoes, red pepper, celery, zucchini, and yellow squash) topped with a poached egg. And poached eggs are so darn photogenic!

Yep, definitely time for lunch. I just fought the impulse to lick my screen.